Crawling back to life
by Andieke
Summary: t's been three months since being buried alive and Nick is still trying to recover from it. Can this newbie help him getting his life back?  Post GraveDanger
1. Prologue

Summary: It's been three months since being buried alive and Nick is still trying to recover from it. Can this newbie help him getting his life back?

Disclaimer: I don't own them, but I do own Ashley Lopez :)

Note: This is my first CSI story so be kind.

The first few chapters will be mostly personbased, later on when something big happens I will also focuss on the crime scene and the processing and stuff.

Since English isn't my first language, I'm in need of Beta. Should someone want to do it, let me know. If not, deal with the mistakes. :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sara Sidle glanced at her partner for the night. It had been 3 months since the ordeal he and the rest of the team had been going through and things hadn't returned to normal or better he hadn't returned to normal. The first sign was the lack of dates. He usually told them pretty much everything, especially to Warrick. It sometimes felt like they were keeping score. But that had stopped; he also never really reacted to Warrick's stories. He listened, he did that, but you never got any reaction out of him. 'Oh' and 'mm' weren't reactions in Sara's book. If you saw him walking around, or sitting next to you in the break room or a car, you couldn't help but feel like looking at a man who had giving up on life. Sara knew that he was taking the pills the doctor had subscribed him, he had to otherwise he could be looking for a new job, but medication didn't give you back the will to live. According to her he needed something or someone to live for again, but this was something that was easily said, but not so easily done.

Nick Stokes watched the scenery go by as the car headed back towards the lab. He had seen Sara glance at him, but decided to ignore it. He had been ignoring a lot lately, especially his own unhappiness, but how can someone be happy when he's been through was he had been.

'_It's been three months; you should show any signs of recovery'_ a little voice inside his head said to him. Nick wanted to say something back, tell himself that it was just 3 months, but he realized it was the truth. It had been three months of counseling, taking medication and going back to work and still he hadn't changed. He knew he needed something in his life to get him back on track, to find a reason to life again. But the question was how: how do you get up after a thing like that, how do you get up when you cannot even look in the mirror without flinching, how do you get up when you know that your life should have ended right there and then?

Gilbert Grissom watched the girl enter his office. She was the newest addition to the grave yard shift, someone desperately needed. Ashley Lopez had been the only name that really stood out. He had seen hundreds of applications and hers was a request for a transfer. He could understand is, with your father being your supervisor, it was only natural to have this need to prove it somewhere else. Her training cases had been reviewed by someone else and it turned out she was the best LA had to offer at this moment. Grissom had sensed the sadness in her father's voice when he had called them to say he would like her to come over. Nobody likes to see one of its best people leave. But her father had acknowledged that Ashley wanted to leave, to let his shadow behind and move on. But there was something else about Ashley. From the moment he had read the transfer papers and had seen her files, his gut had told him that Ashley Lopez might be the girl who could save one of his team members from falling apart.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter one**

Nick Stokes glanced at the woman sitting next to him. She didn't seem to notice him staring at her as she kept her eyes on the road. The car was filled with silence every now and then broken by the metallic voice of the GPS lady. Nick wasn't allowed to drive just yet, so he had tossed the keys to Ashley without a word. She hadn't said anything as well, just got in the car and entered the address in the GPS.

Nick was glad she had done that because he didn't feel like saying much, not even giving directions.

But that didn't mean his head wouldn't be filled with zillion of questions about this newbie and what she knew about him and what she didn't know about it. Grissom once said that it was important to know stuff about each other, so you would know how people would react to certain situations. His ordeal was something his team members needed to know. Just so they could place certain reactions.

So he was wondering whether Ashley knew everything about him that she needed to know so they could work together. He certainly didn't know everything about her, but he didn't feel like asking.  
'_I know about it'_ Ashley suddenly said as they arrived at the crime scene.  
'_Heu?'_ was the only thing he could find to reply.  
'_Grissom told me, so you can stop worrying about the fact whether I know about it or not.'_ She said, and then she got out of the car.

Nick remained seated for a couple of seconds before getting out as well. He couldn't help but feel like something had happened to him, something in the way Ashley would deal with him. She had used the word it to describe it, but it was a normal it. There wasn't a 'if I say the actual word out loud he's going to fall apart in million pieces' tone to it. Strangely enough it made him feel two different things. First relief, cause she saw him as a normal guy, someone normal she had to work with and wasn't planning on walking on eggshells when it came to him. But on the other side he felt frustration. There was no way in the world she could know what he had been through and then referring to the ordeal with a neutral it was just unrespectful towards him. It was like he almost wanted her to treat him with care, the way you would with a box full of glass.

The two conflicting emotions kept flowing through him while processing the crime scene, possibly because Ashley kept feeding them. She wasn't rude or anything, actually he quite liked working with her, it was just the way she was dealing with the piece of information. It was like to her nothing ever happened and it frustrated him. He almost wanted to scream at her, saying that she had to stop doing stuff and actually notice that he had gone through it all. In the past 3 months Nick had hated the way his team member acted around him, but he had also started to expect people to behave that way. And now that someone wasn't doing that at all, he felt confused, misunderstood. In the car ride back to the lab, he couldn't help himself; he had to say something about it.

'_About that thing earlier'_ He started.  
'_Mm'_ Ashley said  
'_I feel a bit …'_ He started his sentence but trailed off, not really knowing how he actually had to say things.  
_'You feel a bit misunderstood by the fact that I don't walk on eggshells when being around you'_ Ashley said. He looked at her; she had said exactly what he wanted to say.  
'_Don't worry, I know the feeling. You'll get there.'_ She went on. Now he went into staring mode. He kept staring at the woman sitting next to him, trying to figure out what the hell she meant with that last sentence. There were hundreds of questions he wanted to ask her, but he couldn't speak the words. Mostly because he felt frustrated, irritated, almost getting mad. She knew him for just a week and here she was telling him she knew the feeling. She couldn't, it was impossible to be able to understand any kind of feeling he had been feeling in the last 3 months. In order to feel his emotions she should have been in the same situation as him and honestly she didn't look like someone who had a too close encounter with dead.  
'_I'm really sorry, but I don't think you can understand anything I'm feeling'_ He had to force the words out, but he had to, he would explode if he didn't. She turned her head and looked at him.  
'_Why's that?'_ She asked him.  
'_You would have been ….'_ His voice trailed of once again. He just couldn't force the words out of his mouth. Saying them was making it all too real again; hell even thinking the words brought shivers down his spine.  
'_You don't know anything about it, so shut up about the way I feel!'_ Nick immediately regretted the tone he had used. The anger had worked its way out of his system and his words were like poisoned arrows. Here he was, nearly yelling at the one person who treated him like a normal, sane guy. Ashley's eyes stared at him, but not out of shock. No, the thin line formed by her lips revealed anger and Nick expected her to blow up against him. But she didn't, she remained silent. When they arrived at the lab, she got out of the car without a word, grabbing the evidence and disappeared into the lab.

Nick felt somewhat defeated as he followed her inside. Because he wasn't in the mood to work and Ashley didn't seem in the mood to be working with him, he decided to go and grab of cup of coffee before finding her. He was still sitting in the break room when Ashley appeared in the doorway. She was holding what looked like some official police file or something else. He nearly jumped a feet in the air when she threw it on the table just in front of his cup of coffee.  
'_I may not know how it feels to be buried alive, but I do know how it feels like knowing you should have died right there and then'_ She said, well more yelled right into his face.

After that she left, leaving him with the file on the table. He looked down and noticed it was open at a page. The first thing he noticed was the picture. It showed a woman with what looked like three bullet wounds in her back. His gaze traveled down the page and his heart almost stopped when he read the name of the victim.

_Victim: Ashley Lopez. Shot 3 times from behind while processing a scene. _

He kept re reading the same line and started to feel slightly sick. She had been closer to death than he had been. Looking at the positions of the bullets wounds and the amount of blood loss it was almost a miracle she was still walking around. He turned the page and started to read the report, but had to stop half way. She must have been in hospital for ages and yet she walked around like nothing happened. Plus she was right about the feelings, she must have experienced them as well and yet she seemed to have recovered completely.

'_Maybe she can help you get back up'_ the voice in his head told him and for once he agreed. He grabbed the file and got up from his seat, leaving to find her and to apologize. And maybe for getting a chance of getting his life back.


End file.
